Reading Neuromancer for the first time in 2025

What Cyberpunk Is (and Isn’t)

• One camp defines literary cyberpunk very narrowly as “near‑future fiction where technology is central to the plot,” often crime‑ish but not necessarily about corporations or dystopias.
• Others argue this misses the point: the “punk” was the break from techno‑optimism—technology as harmful/ambivalent, globalization, corporations eclipsing nations, culture warped by tech. Heist/caper plots are seen as incidental.
• Several posters reject labeling cyberpunk as primarily crime fiction, citing authors and anthologies with little to no crime focus.
• Consensus: aesthetic tropes (rain, neon, chrome, Japanese brands) are what feel dated; you can still write fresh cyberpunk if you keep the critical, countercultural core.

Cyberpunk, Counterculture, and Co‑optation

• Strong thread: cyberpunk emerged from counterculture; with hacking, digital tech, and “VC money” now mainstream, there’s little room for art that truly operates outside the system.
• Others say counterculture didn’t die, it either became dominant culture, got commodified (“recuperated”), or moved underground (small web, queer/BIPOC instances, DIY scenes).
• Disagreement over whether classic cyberpunk was actually countercultural or a libertarian/neoliberal fantasy that glamorizes surviving in corporate dystopia.
• Heated debate about how much Japan actually contributes to counterculture versus aesthetics, and whether Western or Japanese works have deeper political critique.

Gibson’s Prescience and Blind Spots

• Many are struck by Neuromancer’s “conceptual” accuracy (AI, VR, networks, corporate power, mental life entangled with data) more than concrete predictions.
• Others push back: VR, cybernetics, and AI were common SF ideas; calling him uniquely prescient is overstated.
• Noted misses: no smartphones, almost no screens, hand‑wavey “magical” cyberspace compared to otherwise gritty tech (fax, space travel, biotech).
• Gibson’s focus on Japanese and German brands is read as a 1980s extrapolation that today maps eerily onto anxiety about Chinese tech.

Prose, Difficulty, and Plot Structure

• Many find the prose dense, “Lorem Gibson”‑like, and exhausting; losing the thread for a week can mean having to restart. Others find it immersive, poetic, and intentionally disorienting—future slang treated as normal, like reading a report from the future.
• Some readers prefer more “idea‑dense but clear” writers (Stephenson, PKD, Lem, Egan, Vinge, Brunner) and see Gibson as style‑first, light on coherent tech or deep argument.
• Several posters argue his real gift is language, atmosphere, and fashion; his plots often reduce to a recurring pattern: mysterious wealthy patron, ragtag specialists, McGuffin chase, protagonists as pawns with little agency. Enjoyable, but structurally repetitive.

State of the Genre and Successors

• Many feel “classic” cyberpunk has become self‑parody: the tropes are 40 years old, and newer works (big games, some novels) mostly remix them. Others point to fresher or adjacent works (post‑cyberpunk, literary SF, graphic novels) as keeping the spirit alive.
• Multiple alternative or precursor recommendations surface: Brunner (Stand on Zanzibar, Shockwave Rider), Vinge (True Names, Deepness in the Sky), Stephenson (Snow Crash, Diamond Age), Cadigan, Effinger, Sterling, Transmetropolitan, and more.

Adaptations, Translations, and Personal Reception

• Anticipation and anxiety about the upcoming Apple TV Neuromancer adaptation: tension between faithfulness and avoiding cliché; some suggest heavy use of voiceover.
• Mixed experiences: some found Neuromancer life‑changing and endlessly re‑readable; others bounced off the first chapters or only got through via audiobook. Translations (into Greek, Czech, etc.) sometimes change the perceived flow and difficulty.